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It’s the kind of pseudo-scientific question that pops up online every so often which makes you stop for a second and scratch your head.

A similar question can be asked about water. Is it wet or does it just make other things wet?

The answer lies in how you define “wet”. If we’re using it as an adjective (definition: covered or saturated with water or another liquid), then lava is a liquid state so it therefore it’s wet. But nothing touched by lava is left damp or moist, which means that you can’t really use wet as a verb to describe lava.

Yeah, we’d say this is wet – how about you? (Image: Getty)

As ever with these kinds of puzzles, the internet likes to get involved. And if you’ll pardon the pun, the debate is getting heated.

I always get an urge to “squidge” lava, but also realise it’s very important that I keep my hands.

please be careful because the old people are going to think that we all actually want to touch and eat lava and there will be so many headlines like ‘millennials want to eat lava and are risking their lives to do so’ and they’ll start packaging it in childproof containers

Craig McClarren, a volcanologist from San Diego, California goes into a bit more detail on Quora.

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‘Our common usage of the word involves water (i.e. covered or saturated with water). The lava, itself (when liquid) is very much above the boiling point of water, so it is not wet with liquid water, so it’s a no in that sense,’ he writes.

Lava contains water when it’s magma (Rex Features)

‘But here is where the ‘kind of’ comes in. Lava does contain a lot of water, especially prior to eruption (when it’s called magma), but also as it flows across the ground,’ he explained.

‘As mentioned, though, water boils off immediately at those temperatures so it’s not liquid or even vapor water within the lava. The water is actually dissolved and broken apart molecularly, into dissociated H+ and OH-… but in a sense, the lava is saturated with water, even though it’s not in a liquid or even, necessarily, a molecular state.’